In hurricane-prone areas or possibly tornado-prone areas, often when advance notice is provided, windows and doors get covered with plywood to reduce penetration by wind and flying debris. In the past, the plywood was screwed or nailed to the door or window frame and removed when the storm resided. The process of holding the plywood in place and nailing or screwing it to the frame is time-consuming and often required one person to hold the plywood while another person fastens the plywood to the window or door frame. Unfortunately, the screws leave holes where they entered the frame. Even worse, if not pre-drilled, the nails or screws sometimes crack the frame.
An improvement to the process of mounting plywood to the door or window frame is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,634,618 to Farmer, Jr. et al., which is hereby incorporated by reference. This patent describes an adjustable clip for mounting the plywood between two opposing surfaces (e.g., the inner side surfaces of the door or window frame). The clip described in this patent has a U-shaped “cup” portion into which the plywood fits and a means to apply force to the opposing surfaces which, in one embodiment, is a screw. Unfortunately, this clip is not suitable for a range of materials, being designed to fit only one size of material (e.g., ¼″ plywood). This requires installers to carry different clips for different sizes of plywood or similar material (e.g., ¼″ plywood, ⅜″ plywood, ½″ plywood, 10 mm plastic). Furthermore, after the storm, if plywood is used, it often absorbs moisture. The plywood swells from the moisture and may not fit in the U-shaped cup of this patent.
What is needed is an adjustable clip or support that fits many different thicknesses of planar material such as plywood while holding the planar material against the inner surfaces of a window or door frame during situations such as severe weather.